In “Taming The Sheet Music Tiger, Part 1″, I started exploring the possibilities of converting my entire sheet music collection into a digital format. (See http://www.musicteachershelper.com/blog/taming-the-sheet-music-tiger/). The process of digitizing my collection to save space and improve searchability has been going very well. The process takes time like any large archiving project. It is similar to ripping a CD collection to MP3. However, the benefits are already presenting themselves. I do have more space in my apartment. I can easily mail a PDF file to a student which can be viewed or printed on their computer at home. I’ve already seen a saving on toner and paper costs.
I have had to invest in hard drive storage for my digital sheet music collection. This was mainly to create plenty of backup copies. I also needed to backup tens of thousands of MP3s, photos, my web page, and my home project studio files. I wanted copies of my data stored offline, to be protected against power surges that could damage the originals on my main computer drives. External drives seemed to be the answer. To save money on drive storage, I learned how to build an external hard drive.
One TB (terabyte) drives have been hovering around $70-$90 (or lower at times) on sites like Tigerdirect.com, Geeks.com, CompUsa.com and Newegg.com. Another site that is worth checking out for competitively shopping tech purchases is www.DealsofAmerica.com. So I competitively shop the internal hard drive to get the best possible price, and then put that drive into a compatible external enclosure. The enclosures start around $20, and go up from there.
The ability to build an external drive has also proven helpful when a computer has had a serious failure. It has permitted me to retrieve data easily without a third party, usually within minutes. I simply open the computer up, extract the needed drive, mount it in a compatible external enclosure, and then retrieve my data with a different computer. These drives are small and portable, so changing computers is easy. Best of all, a DIY external drive is easy to do.
So first thing, is it important to understand that most hard drives are IDE or SATA. This refers to the style of connector that the drive uses to transfer data.
IDE looks like this.
From the rear of the drive:
Viewed from the bottom of the drive:
Here are two photos to help you identify a SATA connection.
From the rear of the drive:
And this is what the SATA connection looks like when the drive is flipped over:
SATA drives are newer, with faster data transfer times than IDE. 1 TB internal SATA drives are very easy to find on any of the aforementioned web sites.
IDE is an older connector. Prices have been rising on IDE drives, but they are still readily available. I usually purchase SATA drives now, but I do have some older IDE drives that have been pulled from computers that have been recycled into a second life as external drives. (By the way…IDE and SATA external enclosures are usually similar in price, so it makes sense to put an old drive back into use if all that is required is a $20 enclosure).
So to summarize, you want to put a SATA drive in a SATA enclosure and an IDE drive in an IDE enclosure. And some drive enclosures now offer both connectors in one case, like this enclosure from Geeks.com:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=USB20-SATA-SIL&cpc=SCH
Notice the 3.5 designation with this drive? This is the physical size the enclosure supports. 3.5 inches is a standard sized (desktop) internal hard drive. 2.5 inches is a laptop hard drive. Make sure the enclosure and a drive housing you order match in size.
To find an enclosure, just go to some of the aforementioned sites and type “external drive enclosure”. To find a drive, try “Internal Hard Drive:” as a search. There will be dozens of search results that can then be sorted by SATA or IDE, size, price…whatever is needed. Mix and match the drives and enclosures based on budget and preferences, just make sure sizes and connector styles match.
Once the drive and enclosure is in hand, assembly is simple. I’ll demonstrate building an external SATA drive first, and then demo an IDE drive build.
Open the enclosure:
As you can see, there usually isn’t much inside one of these enclosures, except for a tiny bit of breadboard and some wires.
This is the connector for the SATA drive.
Mount the drive to the connector. Make sure the drive fully seats onto the connector.
At this point, this particular model enclosure requires that I need to replace the cover and bolt it into place:
And now I bolt the drive in place to keep it secure:
Note: some drives will require you to bolt the drive in place before closing the cover. We’ll see this shortly during the IDE drive build.
Place the enclosure into its’ stand (if it came with one).
Then hook up the power and connect the drive to your computer. All finished! So let’s repeat that process for an IDE drive.
Open the enclosure. You can see that this one opens differently than the last enclosure we built:
In this case, the IDE connector is on a short yellow ribbon:
There is a second white connector that supplies power to the hard drive. It looks like this:
And the power connector hooks in next to the IDE connection on the drive:
Now connect the IDE port. Make sure both the power and IDE cables are well seated.
Bolt the drive down:
Replace the enclosure cover:
Both the cover back into place, hook up the power and the proper connector cables and you are ready to go!
As you can see, there are different styles of housings, so assembly is generally the same, but it is not ALWAYS the same (a little like assembling drum sets). The IDE enclosure in the demo was made by Rosewill. The SATA enclosure is the Metal Gear Box Substance. I really like the Metal Gear Box Substance enclosure as it is held together with thumbscrews, making assembly and disassembly a little easier. I also love the light show when this drive fires up. This drive always gets a few positive comments from students and parents.
Consider how the external drive (the housing) actually connects to the computer. There are USB, Firewire and eSATA connectors.
USB tends to be the slowest connector of the group, meaning backups will take longer. This may not matter if backups are done in the overnight hours while one is sleeping. Firewire and eSATA are faster. (For the more technically savy among you…I’m not going to nitpick the speeds of USB 2.0 vs Firewire in this blog, so please accept that these are just generalizations). Just make sure the connector on your external drive matches the desired available port on your computer.
And one last thing…unless the internal drive comes preformatted, it will have to be formatted before it can be used. This is easily done on PC systems with the tools included in the “My Computer” toolbar.
About the Author
Brittany Frompovich is a well-respected bassist, vocalist, songwriter and music educator. She has performed regularly in the Mid-Atlantic region for 20 years. Brittany is actively exploring chord melody bass, developing original songs and arrangements of covers. She graduated Cum Laude from Bloomsburg University in 1995 with a Bachelors degree in Music. She relocated to Virginia in 1997, where she began an active music career that blended teaching, writing, subbing, and gigging. Since then, Brittany has run a wide ranging gamut of musical styles, including classic rock, contemporary rock, original Celtic rock, classical, folk, singer-songwriter, R&B, traditional Celtic and Civil War music, funk, Latin, fusion, and big band jazz. She has been published in several prominent trade magazines and Internet journals. In June 1993, Songwriter's Monthly printed her article on creating a pop-filter for use in the home studio. In 1997, Bassics Magazine (Vol. VI No. 2) and Bass Frontiers On-line featured her interview with double bassist Edgar Meyer. In addition to being an accomplished electric and double bassist, Brittany is a capable guitarist, vocalist, and percussionist. She is also an exceptional, dedicated, and progressive music educator. Her teaching practice focuses on helping students become better human beings and helping students learn to express themselves through music. She is highly regarded and sought after for her work as a music educator. Ms. Frompovich is passionate about music and the bass, and she is always advancing her creative journey as a musician and as an educator.
In your last post on this subject, you referred to the concept of "fair use" in an educational setting. While there are some allowances for this, they do not cover the type of project that you seem to be undertaking.
Two major qualifications for "fair use" in an educational setting are that the copies are temporary, and that they do not in any way reduce sales of the copyrighted work.
Neither is the case here... your digital copies are going to be permanent, and you refer to e-mailing copies to students, which skirts around the legal requirement to purchase a separate copy for them (it's possible you are only e-mailing self-made teaching materials or public domain content, but you do not indicate that).
I do not mean to criticize you for your personal actions with your music, but I am very disappointed to see two articles on this site advising other music educators to break copyright law, and showing how to do it easily.
by Chris — Tue May 5, 2009 @ 3:44 pm
And yes, you are assuming that I've written none of the materials I am handing out. I have a scales, modes, and theory curriculum that is quite lengthy. I have e-mailed copies of those items to students who have lost their paper copies in order to save myself the time and trouble of re-copying or printing those docs and mailing the paper copies.
As for storage, it's my music. I'll store it as I like. My CDs are all stored as MP3s now so I can't damage the original CDs. It is the same concept, except I am throwing out (actually recycling) the originals once they are scanned in order to make space in my apartment.
As far as diminishing sales, all of my students show up for juried events with original copies of music in their hands, just like the judges ask. My kids buy 2 or 3 textbooks each. I spent several HUNDRED dollars in 2008 alone on digital sheet music downloads from Musicnotes.com. I do this so the kids have the songs they want for their lessons. Doing this also helps to keep the students out of sites that offer free "music", because once they see me use Musicnotes.com, they are more inclined to use that service themselves. And we're still not considering the numerous textbooks, orchestral scores, and print music I have purchased through local stores. So no offense, it's my digital library. I'm doing my part to support artists and authors, out of my own pocket by buying original copies.
I had hoped the value of a DIY external drive construction tutorial would not have been lost on folks. If one of my hard drives takes a hit, I'm out 15+ years of teaching docs, photos, music, web site info, and live recordings from gigs. The ability to back all of that up is invaluable. That was the actual point of this blog post.
Peace,
Brittany
by Brittany Frompovich — Tue May 5, 2009 @ 6:43 pm
You say that fair use clauses require that a copy must be temporary. I have never seen anything about that. Could you please show me where in section 107 this is mentioned. As a student I have never been given document that self destructed after a given time. Maybe I misunderstand you, or I missed something in the copyright law.
You also say that she doesn't explicitly mention that the material is her own. By not doing so, is she really advising how to break copyright law? If I tell someone directions to drive somewhere and I don't tell them not to exceed the speed limit, is that advising them on how to break traffic laws?
Section 107 of copyright law is very nebulous in many regards. This was done purposely to give great leeway to educators. As such, every university is left generating their own guidelines to help professors navigate these murky waters. These guidelines differ from university to university. When you look at the major court cases in area they are seem pretty far away from what is being done here. This isn't exactly Basic Books, Inc. v. Kinko's Graphics Corp. here.
Cheers,
by Brandon — Tue May 5, 2009 @ 7:28 pm
by Joe — Wed May 6, 2009 @ 1:26 am
This is an excellent article and series. I can't wait for Part 3!!
by Ronnie Currey — Wed May 6, 2009 @ 9:40 am